Posted 01/07/09 at 09:22:09 AM by Pulkit Chandna

A hacker who uses the pseudonym GMZ accepted responsibility for the recent Twitter hack in an IM interview to Threat Level on Tuesday. He divulged little personal details except that he is an 18-year old student on the East Coast. It is also known that he is a member of the online forum for hackers called Digital Gangster; forum members had claimed that GMZ was responsible for the hack even before the hacker owned up.

He revealed that he successfully gained access to the account of a female Twitter staffer named “Crystal.” He had serendipitously stumbled upon her account and had no idea that she was a Twitter staff member with administrative control. He then proceeded to hack her account using a dictionary attack.

The program didn’t have to break a sweat as she was using the password “happiness.” Her flimsy password coupled with Twitter’s primeval security, which allows rapid-fire log-in attempts, led to several high profile Twitter accounts, including the ones belonging to President-elect Barack Obama and Fox News, being compromised.

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